The Fires of the Gods (A Sugawara Akitada Novel)

by I. J. Parker

  Akimoto said, ‘Kobe is to be reconfirmed in his position by the new administration.’

  Perhaps it was too much good news, thought Akitada as he climbed the steps to the Ministry of Justice a week later. He would find it impossible to work under Munefusa, but a man with a family to support must make sacrifices.

  It was late in the morning, and the hallways of the ministry were empty. Akitada went first to Munefusa’s old office, assuming it would be his, but here he found a stranger busily writing notes on a document. The man looked up with a frown. Akitada apologized and went to see the minister.

  The minister’s secretary was another stranger. What had happened to Munefusa? When Akitada gave his name, the secretary bowed quite deeply and went to announce him.

  Fujiwara Kaneie came out himself to receive Akitada. He was smiling, but clearly embarrassed. Akitada felt much the same. He owed the man an apology for his extremely rude behavior.

  Kaneie took him into his office and poured some wine that was standing ready.

  ‘My dear Akitada,’ he said, ‘it is good to have you back.’ He managed to sound both sincere and apologetic.

  Akitada steeled himself for his own apology. ‘I behaved atrociously to you, sir, and beg your pardon for my rash words. I assure you, I regretted them as soon as I left this room.’

  Kaneie gave a nervous laugh. ‘Not at all. You were very angry. I should not have blamed you for that. I, too, regret what I said.’ He paused a moment, then added, ‘You know, I would have explained if I had been allowed to do so. Even now, my dear Akitada, I am restrained from speaking. It was all very unpleasant, and I was extremely relieved when new instructions arrived, rescinding the earlier orders. Please allow me to apologize on behalf of my superiors.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’m very glad to have your trust again.’ He hesitated. ‘But I’m not quite sure what the arrangements are. There was a stranger in my office.’

  Kaneie looked puzzled. ‘A stranger? Munefusa should have left your old office ready for you.’ He shook his head. ‘That man, Akitada. You can have no notion what a horrible muddle he made of things. We had some very difficult cases, and I think all the findings will have to be rewritten. I would have fixed matters, but you know I have no head for the finer points of the law. You have been missed.’

  ‘Where is Munefusa?’

  ‘Munefusa and a number of clerks have been dismissed. It seems he was second cousin to Kiyowara Kane and gold changed hands to… umm… contrive false charges against you. Munefusa will face the censors.’ He added, ‘There are all sorts of rumors. I hear the Minister of the Right will resign – officially as part of the reorganization of Michinaga’s retirement, but he is a known enemy of the crown prince.’ Fujiwara Kaneie smiled and got up briskly. ‘But all is finally back to normal here. Come and let me introduce you to your staff.’

  The news stunned Akitada. So his demotion had not been some dark plot directed at him by his unknown enemies. It had merely been due to a greedy upstart using his personal connections to advance himself. He was not sure if that made it better.

  His ‘staff’ consisted of three men: two junior clerks and one senior. The juniors were recent graduates and looked pleasant enough. The senior was well known to him. He was Shinkai, the same elderly man who had run after him to express his regrets the day Akitada had been dismissed. This pleased Akitada until he saw the enormous, nearly toppling stacks of documents on his desk.

  ‘Umm, yes,’ said the minister, ‘I’m afraid things have stacked up a bit under Munefusa.’

  As if he had heard his name called, the door opened and Munefusa himself appeared. He paled when he saw them and attempted to retreat.

  ‘Come in, Munefusa,’ snapped the minister. ‘I expect you wish to apologize to Akitada for your unconscionable lies about him.’

  Munefusa inched in and bowed. He flushed and avoided looking at Akitada. ‘I did not know Lord Sugawara would be here,’ he said. ‘I came for my notes.’ He swallowed and added in a murmur, ‘I shall need them to refresh my memory.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the minister. ‘When will you appear before the censors?’

  Munefusa mumbled something inaudible and scurried to a shelf to pick up a thin book. He dashed back to the door so quickly that he tripped over his feet and nearly fell out of the room.

  They all burst into laughter.

  Akitada returned home full of the good news and found that his house had been decorated with many-colored flags and sheets that fluttered gaily in the summer breeze. They turned out to be clothes and blankets of all sorts. Apparently, Tamako had decided to air out the clamminess left by the recent rains.

  He found her working among the clothes chests with her maid and told her his news.

  ‘Really?’ she said, distracted. ‘I suppose that means you’ll be away from home again every day.’ Realizing that her response was less than warm, she gave her husband a radiant smile. ‘I’ve become accustomed to having you around.’

  Akitada spied the baby Yasuko abandoned in a half-emptied trunk and went to pick her up.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tamako, ‘would you mind very much entertaining your daughter for a little?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He cradled the baby in his arms, smiling down at her. ‘It will be an honor.’ But then the seriousness of this responsibility struck him. ‘What shall I do if she starts crying?’

  ‘Oh, Akitada,’ his wife teased, ‘how can you be so nervous when she is your second child? In any case, I just fed her. She’ll be asleep soon.’

  He carried his daughter carefully to his room, decided it was too dark and dull for a child and snatched up his bedding roll with one hand before walking out on to the veranda. There, in the shade of the sun-warmed wall of the house, he made a little nest of the quilt and placed her inside. Then he sat down next to his daughter to admire her. She gazed back calmly, pursing rosebud lips.

  What was she thinking of her father with his long face and beetling brows? She did not look frightened, but detached, as if waiting to see if he would prove acceptable.

  He pointed to the garden, the sky, a small bird on a branch, telling her about them. He promised her that some day they would feed the goldfish in his pond together.

  She appeared to listen, but remained distant – or so it seemed to him. Not knowing how to bridge the gulf, he sighed.

  Then he remembered his flute. The memory brought sadness because he had played it for Yori’s departed spirit right here on this veranda. But his little son had loved the sound of the flute from the time he was an infant.

  Akitada went to get it. Sitting back down beside Yasuko, he played a few soft notes and saw her eyes widen. He tried a happy little melody, and the pursed mouth relaxed, a dimple appeared in her cheek, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. She made a soft gurgling sound. Could this be a smile? An almost laugh?

  He lowered the flute, but the baby frowned. The corners of her mouth turned downward.

  Quickly, he raised the flute again and played and, yes, the smile returned. A genuine smile! She was smiling at him. No question about it.

  Filled with pride and happiness, he played song after song until long after his daughter had fallen asleep.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  In the eleventh century, Japan was ruled by an emperor and court nobles in the capital, Heian-kyo (modern Kyoto). The Japanese government was originally patterned after Chinese models, but by this time it was no longer a meritocracy as in T’ang China, but rather in the hands of a single powerful family, the Fujiwaras. At the time of this novel, the man in power was Fujiwara Michinaga. After a century of marriage politics that placed Fujiwara daughters into the imperial bed, the family had become so closely connected to imperial power that emperors were encouraged to abdicate once they produced heirs so that a Fujiwara grandfather or uncle could rule as regent for an under-age emperor. When Michinaga retired as regent in 1017, he had ruled the government for upward of twenty years, the last four as regent and chancellor. H
e was the grandfather of two emperors, father-in-law of three emperors and one crown prince, and father of two regents and many of the ministers. For contemporary accounts of the life of Fujiwara Michinaga and Fujiwara politics, see Okagami, The Great Mirror, (trans. Helen McCullough) and A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (trans. William McCullough & Helen McCullough).

  The business of government was carried out by officials working out of a number of ministries and bureaus that surrounded the emperor’s palace. Other court nobles served as governors of the provinces. These men were often self-serving politicians who aimed at building their private wealth via lucrative appointments, and they contributed greatly to the weakening of the central government over the next two hundred years. Much of the senior officials’ time was spent on court ritual, while lower-ranking members of the aristocracy carried out the day-to-day business of administration.

  Japanese customs mixed native traditions with those of China. The official government language (used almost exclusively by men) was Chinese, but Japanese flourished in the hands of poets and court ladies who kept journals and wrote novels. Lady Murasaki’s novel Genji was written during the first decade of the eleventh century.

  Heian-kyo was originally laid out in a grid in the Chinese manner: that is, following directional laws that placed the imperial palace and government buildings in the center of the northernmost section and divided the rest of the city into a right and left half, each with its own administration. By the eleventh century, the western (or right) capital had fallen on evil times and the city had begun to spread across the Kamo River to the east. The city itself had few religious institutions, but many monasteries and temples dotted the mountains to the north and east.

  Buildings were constructed almost exclusively of wood, with bark or tile roofs. For that reason, fires devastated the city periodically and had become so frequent by the eleventh century that emperors left the imperial palace, and many nobles moved out of the city and across the Kamo River. Even given the problems with wood construction and the use of open flames for heating, cooking, and light, there were too many fires to be accounted for by accidents. In fact, many fires were set by thieves, who used the chaos caused by dousing flames in order to break into nearby empty houses.

  Law and order was supposedly kept by the imperial and metropolitan police: a semi-military force that engaged in arrests, investigations, and prosecution by judges who were part of the system. The police also maintained the city’s two jails. In addition, each city ward had a warden who kept order in his own area. In spite of this, crime flourished in the city and even in the imperial palace enclosure. Poverty contributed, but part of the problem was that emperors frequently declared amnesties and liberated all the jail inmates because they wished to please the gods or avert some disaster. In addition, Buddhism forbade the taking of a life, regardless of the seriousness of the crime committed.

  The native Shinto religion coexisted peacefully with Buddhism, which was a later import from China. That Akitada should have visited a Buddhist monastery headed by an abbot with imperial blood was by no means an uncommon case. Many emperors and princes took clerical vows. Some of the Buddhist temples shared space with important Shinto shrines, and emperors made pilgrimages to worship at both. Akitada encounters a Shinto shrine virgin and a Shinto priest. Shinto kami, or gods, are closely related to the imperial descent and to rice culture. Imperial princesses always served as virgins at the important Ise and Kamo shrines. But there were many shrines and many kinds of female attendants. Some were shamans and could be powerful and dangerous because they transmitted the words of the kami. They were adept at casting spells, foretelling the future, speaking for the dead, and exorcizing evil spirits. Akitada’s reservations against hiring a female shaman illustrate the fact that many of these women wandered the country, engaging in licentious behavior and earning a living by fortune-telling and public dancing.

  Marriages in upper classes were polygamous: that is, a husband could have many wives. They held different ranks, depending on their backgrounds, and some were merely concubines. In addition, men frequently carried on outside affairs. Marriages could also be dissolved on the husband’s word. But women were able to own property. That fact and the influence of their fathers protected them to some extent. Those without personal wealth or family protection did not fare so well. Lady Kiyowara is Kiyowara’s first lady because she belongs to a powerful family on her own account, and her son is the heir even though he is not the firstborn like Tojiro, the son of a lower-ranking wife.

  The rituals performed to assure the safe birth of Tamako’s child involved Buddhist and Shinto rites and clerics, as well as the popular customs associated with keeping evil spirits at bay. For a more complete description of such parturition rites, see The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu, where Lady Murasaki describes in detail the activities accompanying and following the birth of an imperial child. Many of these had to do with the fact that childbirth was considered one of several forms of pollution (death was another) and the belief that a woman in labor was a favorite prey of all sorts of evil spirits.